Big Gay’s 52 Things Basket
See that brown basket up on the top shelf? That’s a gift I made a long time ago for Big Gay. She still has it, and that makes me very happy.
My column today at Work It, Mom! is called The Most Meaningful Christmas Gift I Ever Gave. I hope you will read it and discover how simple it is to create the magic of the 52 Things Basket. I love how the story turned out. Read the story here.
Oh, this. This makes my heart thankful.
It’s a good thing I was the only one in the office Wednesday afternoon, because I clicked this link and within two minutes I was sobbing into a wad of tissues.
Yes, I know it’s an ad for a bank. Yes, I know it’s a year old. Yes, I know it’s all staged. But that doesn’t make it not beautiful.
Take five minutes away from the bustle of today and let yourself travel to this bright town square in Spain. Let the Ode to Joy start small and let it grow in your chest, let it leak out of your eyes and make your shoulders shake. It’s joy. That’s the path joy takes. Joy doesn’t start with the crescendo. It begins with a single note. That’s why it’s hard to spot sometimes in its early stages.
Ode to Joy, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, is my favorite piece of music, #1, hands down, not even close. That’s why I chose it for the recessional music when Fartbuster and I got married. And why I chose it as the recessional music when Richard and I got married.
Then a short while later, his parents and I were planning his memorial service with the priest and there in the list of suggested music for the recessional was “Ode to Joy.” Joy? At a funeral?
I chose it. (wait…gotta do some more crying…)
I don’t remember everything from that service, but I do remember the way that music swelled from the organ after all the words had been said. I remember the soaring sound made by hundreds of our friends and family as they sang the modern English lyrics: “Ever singing march we onward, Victors in the midst of strife; Joyful music lifts us sunward in the triumph song of life!” I felt a great sense of relief that the service had been perfectly fitting for Richard. I felt…joy. Joy at having had that one thing go right. The music carried me out of the sanctuary and on to the next part of life.
I wish you joy today. Among all the leftovers and hangovers and overdrafts and overpasses–STOP. Like those people in the square in Spain, all they had to do was stop and listen to joy.
Now cut me some white meat and pass the cranberry sauce!
I’m got a Thanksgiving article on Work It, Mom! called “The Attitude of Gratitude” about teaching our children to practice gratitude. Check it out!
On the day my daughter was born, I wrote seventeen things in my gratitude journal (#1 was “she is here and healthy.” #2 was “That epidural was NICE.”) On the day my husband died from leukemia, I wrote twenty-nine things in my gratitude journal. That certainly doesn’t mean it was a better day; it just goes to show that there are gifts around us even in the darkest times. The daily practice of gratitude keeps me in that state where I can receive them.
Here’s a poem that seems to fit with this week. Another jewel from Mary Oliver. Please treat yourself to some of her books. I have “Thirst” on my night stand right now and I read a poem a day, like savoring a dark chocolate.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Today is my first day of this new year. I am so glad.
The Navajo identify the Mountain Bluebird as a spirit in animal form, associated with the rising sun. The Bluebird Song is sung to remind tribe members to wake at dawn and rise to greet the sun:
Today is my birthday. Just like any other Tuesday, it’s the best day of my life.
We’re gonna need a bigger cake.
When I was a kid, Grandmama Irene made my birthday cake each year. She was famous for her cakes–even had a story in Georgia Magazine that dubbed her “The Cake Lady of Gay.” Legend has it that she bought so many 50lb bags of sugar that the revenuers got a little suspicious and thought she might have a still going somewhere out in the woods!
Some years I chose red velvet with the cream cheese and pecan frosting piled thick between three layers. Other years, I asked for a lemon cheese cake with the glistening lemon frosting. Those of you from other parts of the world may think I meant to say “lemon cheesecake,” but no, that’s something totally different. A lemon cheese cake is a tower of three heavenly white cake layers filled and frosted with translucent and tart lemon curd. There were a couple of years that I chose chocolate or caramel–buttery yellow layers cloaked in hard-cooked icing that got better as the days went by. By the time I went to college, she opted for chocolate pound cakes because they traveled well.
In my teenage years, my dad discovered that I loved coconut cakes as much as he did. He set out to make me a coconut birthday cake. Even though he’s a great cook, there was some kind of black cloud curse over the coconut cake baking process. It got to be a running joke. One year, he said he spent $45 on 3 different batches of frosting and it all still slid off the cake in a glop. It was delicious anyway! The next year, he nailed it with a coconut pound cake and avoided the subject of frosting altogether.
But we all know how kids are, right? Because I had been raised on astounding homemade cakes I yearned for a big old grocery store cake. One with pink frosting roses and my name spelled in piping. Maybe even some of those hard sugar princess castle decorations they sold at the grocery store. Don’t get me wrong–I appreciated every morsel of the cakes Grandmama made for me. But they didn’t look the cakes on TV. And when you’re seven…y’know. You think life is supposed to look like “The Facts of Life.”
I wished for candles. Grandmama made cakes for birthdays, not birthday cakes, so they didn’t come with candles. I really really really wanted candles. I had some wishes I wanted to make.
In my first year at Wesleyan, my friends surprised me with a cake–and it had candles on it. I was so unfamiliar with the process that I caught my thumbnail on fire trying to light all eighteen tiny candles. We had a great laugh and I got to make my wish. I don’t remember what I wished for.
Here’s what I learned from all those birthday cakes. The real treasure, the greatest gifts, were those cakes made by people who love me. Butter, sugar, eggs, time, patience, a light touch–alchemy that spins ordinary food into a celebration. Birthdays are when a family looks back to celebrate the day that the family got bigger. Eating cake reminds us of that sweetness. The candles, though, the candles are for the future, for wishing and thinking about what is to come.
I used every birthday candle from the age of about 28 to 37 to wish for a child. As luck would have it, on my 38th birthday, I hosted a Leukemia Society chili party. I was feeling really light-headed, had to go lie down, but I got my legs back under me in time for dessert. My friend, Karen, remembered that it was my birthday and brought a butter cream dream of a cake. We fired it up and I wished for a family of my own on those candles….and a few weeks later found out that my wish had already come true. Vivi was there for my 39th birthday.
That’s the thing about candles–and family–the light gets brighter with every year.
As a nod to yesterday’s post, here’s another picture of a sweet girl’s daddy feeding her a special lunch. Look at his gentle smile:
Daddy feeding his daughter at the Pie Town fair.
One pretty Saturday, almost 75 years ago, in a ramshackle place called Pie Town, New Mexico, the homesteading families got together for a fair–barbecue, calf-roping, cakes made with all the eggs the chickens could lay. A photographer named Russell Lee was there with his trusty camera and a brand new invention: color film.
Families like these:
Thumbs Faro and Doris Caudill, homesteaders.
Mr. and Mrs. Jack Whinery and their children.
Garden adjacent to the dugout home of Jack Whinery, Pie Town New Mexico.
Mr and Mrs Norris
Came to the fair to meet up with neighbors and friends
Gathering for the fair, Pie Town New Mexico
Friends at the Pie Town Fair
Asking the blessing
Enjoy a fresh lunch in the fine weather
Serving BBQ at the Pie Town Fair.
Serving beans at the Pie Town fair.
Serving desserts at the Pie Town fair.
Having lunch at the Pie Town fair
Then there was some singing from the children
Singing at the Pie Town fair
Singing at the Pie Town fair
and then everyone went home for supper.
